This invention relates to a method and apparatus for manufacturing and packaging polyethylene bags that are individually nested inside of each other.
Polyethylene bags, which are sealed on three ends and open on the fourth end, are conventionally manufactured from a tube of polyethylene sheet. A seam is made transverse the web of polyethylene tubing at predetermined lengths in order to form the bottom of each bag. The tubing is typically perforated adjacent the seam in order to allow the individual bags to be separated. A predetermined count of bags produced in this manner is then rolled onto a core and inserted within a dispensing box or the like.
The most noted use for such bags is as trash can liners but they also find use in other applications. The difficulty with polyethylene bags manufactured in this conventional manner, is that the bags must be individually separated from the roll, opened and then pushed down inside a rigid container, such as a garbage can. This method is difficult and time-consuming, which explains why polyethylene bags have not found a greater acceptance in applications such as in bagging merchandise at a store check-out counter.
One approach to making polyethylene bags easier to use, and hence more widely accepted, is to supply the bags nested within each other in a predetermined quantity. In this manner, the batch of bags can be inserted at one time into the rigid container and, as each bag becomes full, the bag may be retracted from the batch. The next of the remaining bags is immediately ready for use. Because polyethylene has a low coefficient of friction, the bags slide well with respect to each other and are easy to withdraw from the container.
The reason that nested polyethylene bags have not received wide-scale acceptance has been the difficulty in manufacturing such bags. Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for manufacturing nested polyethylene bags that is both inexpensive and reliable in operation. It is a further object of the present invention to provide such a method and apparatus that produces nested polyethylene bags in a neat package which is easy to handle and install in a rigid container.